The Ancient Age
I settled in place and built a granary for a 10-turn settler factory. The second city did the same, and all other cities concentrated on either workers or settlers, for fast expansion and dense city placement across the island. The exceptions were the towns I had prebuilding for Mapping, which I reached in 1325bc. My first galley met the Spanish and Zulu, and I met the Egyptians and Persians through contact trades. I used Maths to catch up in tech, then Literature got me a couple of third-tier techs in trades, and my last research of the ancient age was Monarchy, which government I planned to use for my conquering. By this time I had completed the Lighthouse (800bc) met the two civs on Beta continent, and sank within sight of English borders (approaching from the large tundra island west of Alpha).
Also in the very last turns of the era, I dowed the Spanish and began preparing my 14 swords for the crossing, from the northern tip of my island, to the silk town of Santiago on the mainland. To end the ancient age, I actually bought my final turn of Monarchy research from X-man, which cost me plenty of extra anarchy, and traded it for the last required tech, entering the medieval in
290bc.
Spain
My invasion force is ready to ship out of my northernmost town in 210bc, and in 190bc I take Santiago, just a turn ahead of my Zulu allies. This town is a bit removed from the main Spanish core, connected by roads snaking through the jungle, but my foot soldiers trudge off northwest, encountering token resistance as they go. Seville falls in 130bc, the same turn I establish the Carthaginian monarchy, and Madrid in 50bc. My long anarchy has made me nervous about missing the Wall, so I switch my FP prebuild over to Wall and complete it in 30bc: the golden age is on. My original Wall prebuild becomes the FP, finishing a couple of turns later.
By now I have put a town next to the horses on the large island east of Carthage, but I'm not really making any effort to get those horses hooked up with roads or harbours or things like that. With 80 shield harbours, it all seems like too much effort.
So I keep on churning out swords, using min research and disconnect/reconnect. As a result, the war plods on at an agonisingly slow pace. Spain is ejected from the mainland in 50ad, leaving two towns on the jungle island. The Egyptians, Persians and Zulu each get one Spanish town too, so my gains in this war are not that great. At least I have some luxuries in my control now.
Relocation
As Rome finishes off England (70ad) and I take the last Spanish towns (150ad), I am getting ready to move my palace over to Madrid. It isn't a very long jump, but it is a good match for my current unit deployment; I have large numbers of swords hanging around in Spain waiting for (a) the next war to start, and (b) Feudalism, so they can upgrade to maces. So I let the swords pile up in Madrid while building settlers as fast as Carthage can manage. The AI get Feudalism in 170ad, but I have nothing to trade for it as they are consistently out-researching me, so I have to continue my own research. And the longer this goes on, the more swords I build up and the higher my unit support costs get, and the slower I can afford to research. Everything in this game seems to happen so slowly
.
Finally in 280ad I buy the last turn of my Feudalism research from the Zulus, and short-rush Madrid's barracks to 30 shields. Carthage is ready to build its final settler, so the next interturn it disbands and the capital jumps over to Madrid. Which is
after Carthage in the build order, so its corruption vanishes in time to get the 10 shields needed to finish the barracks. So I can upgrade 15 swords to maces on that interturn, and they immediately head off into Persia under cover of a ROP. Another 11 maces follow in 300ad, which is the last turn of my golden age. Thereafter I can only afford to upgrade 6 swords per turn.
Persia
My initial target is Persepolis itself, for the town contains Pyramids, as well as the Glibrary. My relentlessly slow unmounted troops reach it in 340ad, with a trail of units snaking back to the Spanish province, who can attack other nearby towns. Persepolis is a hill city, and X-man has had Feudalism long enough to build a lot of pikes, so I budget a lot of units to take it down. And take it I do, but the cost is devastating; 12 maces and 2 elite swords dead (@ Megalou: yep, if I had only 14 strength 4 attackers, I would not have taken it
). I take three more towns south of Persep, losing another six maces, and mopping up stray immortals and archers in the area costs yet more maces. This is brutal stuff, but I get my luck back when skirmishing outside Persepolis gets two leaders in two turns. The first rushes Sun Tzu there, and the second forms an army which I will fill with knights; the Zulus just got Chivalry, so I know the Glib will give it to me shortly.
The campaign continues along similar lines; huge peaks and troughs in the luck graph as I take towns with either horrendous or inconsequential losses, and two flips in a row, one of them Persepolis itself. But the arrival of knights on the scene seals the Persian's fate, as the border expansion from my new palace finally brings me horses (I still haven't hooked the grassy island!) The X-man is finally knocked out in 490ad, and I have already begun my assault on the Zulu.
Zululand
I had a ROP with the Zulus, made before I raped Persia, and rather than try to renew it, I plan to have my attack on Shaka coincide with the ROP's expiry. The year is 480ad, and having switched my homeland production to horses (upgrading to knights), my initial attack is launched with a small force of knights and assorted lower-class units that I had been keeping in reserve, supported by the knight army. In the first turn I take 4 core towns including Zimbabwe, but that is about as much as this force can handle. I get another leader near Zimbabwe though, and his use is obvious; I rush Leonardo. From here to the end of the game, I make enough gpt to match my homeland's unit production. My Zulu forces are not supported from Persia, as those troops are engaging the Egyptians, but the increased numbers of knights crossing from Carthage gets the campaign moving again. The Zulus are knocked off the mainland in 590ad, and their last towns on the eastern island are taken in 630ad. My flow of leaders is turning into a flood; these last operations against the Zulu get me two more, one rushing Epic on the eastern island (for border expansion) and the next forming up another knight army (after all, I have plenty of elite* units).
Egypt
The Egyptian ROP was signed shortly after the Zulu ROP, and immediately before the Persian rape, so the Egyptian and Zulu campaigns are mostly concurrent. Again, I don't have the troops to take much of their empire, so I concentrate on their core. The first strike (540ad) takes Thebes and Memphis, which removes their iron source and one of their horses. Then I pick off their southeastern towns, consolidating our border and denying them horses altogether. I try to move on Alexandria, their next strongest town, but am distracted by Thebes flipping in 570ad. It is only a minor set-back though, and as a couple of towns in my Spanish core start sending units into Egypt I gather momentum. Thebes flips a second time, but by 630ad, the Egyptians survive only on the island lying between the Alpha and Beta continents. I plan to make this a staging post for my invasion of Beta - I had originally wanted to take on England rather than the powerful Romans, but Julius had the wit to demand Chivalry from me in 580ad. I suspected he was serious, in spite of my all-conquering military, but I found the demand so amusing that I let him dow. Besides, Rome is closer than England. So with Rome next on the menu, I finish off the Egyptians in 650ad.
Rome
In fact I find that I don't really have enough ships to get my troops transferred quickly from Alpha, especially as my Carthaginian core is still pumping out several knights per turn (I have a lot of towns micro'd to 10spt), and these units need a significant naval commitment to get to the new front line. But my initial attack is launched from the Egyptian island, taking a town on the northeast coast of Beta in 660ad. I know Julius has some pretty huge stacks of foot soldiers wandering around, but he catches me by surprise in how fast he can bring them to bear on my beach-head. Nevertheless, the knights' high def value proves its worth for once, and my town holds out, assisted by a constant stream of new units shipped in from the east.
In 730ad I can finally go on the offensive, capturing other coastal towns in the area, and then pushing west through Roman junk towns, towards a small ex-English province which I know I can partly acquire in peace deals. By now I have been counting tiles for a while, and in 780ad I figure I can get enough to reach domination; I give Julius peace for two of his towns, settle a couple more myself, and rush a little more culture. I go 30 tiles over the limit in
790ad.
6587 Firaxis points gets me 10020 Jasons.
[size=-2]plus some cash, but who's counting that?[/size] That makes them worthwhile.
They don't row my boats any faster! 
